Invisalign Week 8 of 34

Invisalign Week 8 of 34: So far the Pros and Cons of this ortho treatment have been standard (based on the other experiences I’ve researched online).

I mentioned in [BFS-001]Rand(Thought)3 that I would write about my experiences leading up to deciding to get ortho treatment, so here’s the start of it… but for those of you who came to check out the Pros and Cons:

Pros

• Change tray out every week
• It’s been easy to keep my snacking in check since I can’t eat with the trays in (and it’s not convenient to take out)
• No one can tell that I have them unless I point it out
• The nightly massage my teeth get from the vPro5 (in GIF above)

Cons 

• Painful / Sensitive teeth 2-3 days after changing the tray out, makes eating a challenge
• It’s a hassle every time I want to eat, I have to take the trays out (have to excuse myself in public), then clean my teeth after eating before putting them back on
• Trays stain easily. The days before I have to switch them out, I go ahead and drink cold coffee with them in.
• For each week’s tray change, there is a small learning curve with how to speak to mitigate the lisp

On Starting Ortho Treatment

Early on in my adult life, I’ve realized my teeth haven’t come out right to the extent that I occasionally felt tightness in my teeth where there was overcrowding while I ate. I also felt dull sensations where my snaggletooth was (canine came out over my premolar) whenever I’d go for a run.

When I’d smile on camera, the angles of my teeth casted shadows in a way where it looked like I was missing teeth, which then lead me to developing the habit of keeping my lips nice and tight when I smiled.

As soon as I started earning good money, I’ve wanted to get braces. The two main reasons why I didn’t though was 1) It was always really low in my financial priorities and 2) getting braces had associated risks for deployments which required waivers that I was not ready to make a case for.

As soon as both those reasons became a non-factor, I got the ball rolling on getting braces, found out that invisalign was an option, and tada!

It’s funny that after I dropped as much as I did to get them, I found out that some kid printed out his own trays and did his own ortho treatment for 60 bucks. I like to rationalize it as me paying for the hidden risks of having no expertise on how to achieve “good occlusion”.

Sometimes Things Get Ugly Before They Get Better

A huge downside to all of this for me is the fact that I had to get FOUR extractions before starting my invisalign treatment.

I went to 6 different orthodontists for consults, and they all had the same recommendations (with some variance in treatment plans, which correlated with their popularity it seems).

So I went ahead and got four of my premolars extracted, and experienced having to learn a new technique on how to chew. And yes, there is pain associated with all of that as well.

Each tray I go through now, the gaps get smaller and smaller, which is encouraging.

Was all of this worth it, you might ask? We’ll see. After my last tray, I still have to do something about my peg lateral incisors. Aesthetics never really mattered to me much, but unfortunately, there are second order consequences for deviations from aesthetic norms that I want to mitigate… that is worth it, imho.